Woodlea Primary School

The quality of our child’s English work has been recognised by the founders of The Literacy Curriculum as they have asked Woodlea to be one of only 19 ‘Flagship’ schools across the country. To become a flagship school, the founders came to school at the end of the summer term and interviewed staff on our use of the scheme and carried out a mini deep dive of our English curriculum. They also looked at children’s work from across all year groups and were suitably impressed.

I have copied Literacy Tree’s explanation of what a flagship school is below:

“Our Flagship Schools have been chosen for their innovative use of our book-based approach across the curriculum. They have adopted and adapted our planning sequences to complement their own topics or use our themes. Our flagship schools enjoy sharing how they have used the sequences to support engagement and raise attainment in English…….. https://literacytree.com/flagship-schools/

Reading Schemes

At Woodlea Primary School Primary School we use Monster Phonics as our approved phonics scheme. Once our children have a secure grasp of phonetical concepts, and can read fluently on the higher level of Monster Phonics, our children progress onto books from the Oxford Reading Tree scheme which are banded to ensure progression of vocabulary and fluency.

Reading for Enjoyment

We believe passionately that every child should learn to read. We want our children to leave primary school with a confidence and love of reading. We understand that it is essential that, by the end of their primary education, all pupils are able to read fluently, and with confidence, to support them in any subject in their forthcoming secondary education and beyond.

Our Approach to the Teaching of Reading

Over the course of the school year, the children will listen to a range of stories and poems, learning to join in with repeated phrases, for example,  in traditional tales and also sharing information in non-fiction books.  At Woodlea Primary School Primary School, teachers use their subject knowledge to link books to other areas of the curriculum where this is appropriate and  develop a range of reading and writing activities for the children to explore and enjoy.

You can help your child by making sure they bring their book bag into school every day and by listening to them read at home. If you have any questions, or require any support with this, then please ask your child’s class teacher.

We use the Literacy Tree scheme as the backbone of our English curriculum. Within this we use their Literary Leaves aspect as our whole class approach to reading comprehension in Key Stage 2 which involves a daily 40-minute session. We grow literary knowledge and develop skills by using whole books, rather than extracts, promoting a love of learning and an eagerness to read similar texts. Many of our texts link to aspects of other curriculum subjects, leading to deeper thinking and further discussion. 

Literary Leaves use carefully selected novels, poetry collections and high-quality, non-fiction books that connect to our Writing Roots through literary themes. Through this, children are taught the key skills of reading comprehension including: predicting, clarifying, evaluating, inferring, making connections and comparisons, summarising and questioning. They also develop an understanding of how to apply these in a wider range of contexts. Our aim is that all children will become independent, critical readers. 

For more information about The Literacy Tree go to https://literacytree.com/